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The government has not been shy about its Operation Sovereign Borders milestone nor for that matter the 30 or 40 daily increments leading up to it.

It comes ironically enough, at the fag-end of the most mistake-laden fortnight for the government since the travel entitlements debacle marred its first weeks in office.

Back then Tony Abbott had been strangely absent, his minimalist approach erroneously designed to position him as the opposite of the news cycle-obsessed Rudd-Gillard outfits.

What it actually conveyed was a government without a message and a prime minister without a firm hand on the wheel.

Opinion polls reflected this vacuum and by the close of 2013, press gallery journalists were being backgrounded to the effect that things would change in 2014.

Abbott’s performance since has been more positive and the government had looked to be settling in.

But the sitting fortnight just concluded, the last before the May budget session, has been anything but impressive, starting out badly and getting steadily worse.

And with each day, the prime minister’s normally confident body language in parliament has chronicled that slide.

First came the storm over the past business dealings of his assistant treasurer, Arthur Sinodinos.

Sinodinos stood down from his post last week pending Independent Commission Against Corruption hearings into Australian Water Holdings, but it wasn’t Abbott’s doing. He continued to enthusiastically spruik the imminent return of Sinodinos to the ministry.

In any event, the voluntary suspension has failed to defuse the issue amid new testimony at ICAC that Sinodinos was expressly warned of governance problems including the possible insolvency of AWH, when he was chairman in 2010.

Sinodinos himself will give evidence to the first of two ICAC inquiries next week, with commissioner Megan Latham pointedly leaving open the possibility on Wednesday of an actual corruption finding against Sinodinos - ostensibly the government’s chief ministerial guardian of corporate governance - if he is judged to have breached his duties as a company director. Counsel assisting the inquiry, Geoffrey Watson, SC, appears hot-to-trot on this score, arguing the ICAC Act contains a section dealing with corrupt conduct which ''seems to be capable of being applied’’ to directors’ duties ‘‘depending on the facts which emerge’’ in this case.

This has become a running sore for Abbott. Colleagues worry that Abbott’s support will make it harder to cut the minister loose if needed, but it might actually make it easier, allowing the Prime Minister to explain the dismissal as anything but a personal preference.

Either way, there is a noticeable cooling of support for Sinodinos’ return. And there is other fallout too, such as the related decision this week to suspend imminent legislation undoing Labor’s Future of Financial Advice reforms. The FoFA law had ended the lucrative practice of financial advisers taking hidden commissions associated with particular investment products. It also required advisers selling such products to act in the interests of consumers. The suspension of the rollback was a bad look if only because it felt messy and fuelled the appearance that there may have been a conflict of interest in Sinodinos’s championing of the bank-friendly change given his past role as an NAB executive.

The decision to consult further was made by Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, who assumed responsibility for FoFA from his ousted colleague following pressure from the usually conservative National Seniors. Its members stand to lose vital consumer protections under the changes.

Some Liberals are critical of the consultation work done by Sinodinos, noting that even the Financial Planning Association peak body had expressed reservations about the reintroduction of commissions for general financial advice, despite complaining of a welter of new regulations since FoFA came in.

On top of these problems came Attorney-General George Brandis' ham-fisted sales job for his changes to the Racial Discrimination Act. His legally correct yet politically insane observation, that people have a right to be bigots, was an horrendous own-goal.

Then came the Prime Minister’s stunning return to old empire via the restoration of knights and dames in the Australian awards system.

One Liberal observed that not even John Howard had wanted to turn the clock that far back and right on cue, Howard himself confirmed it, telling Fairfax Media, that even conservatives would view the move as ‘‘somewhat anachronistic".

Howard used to rail against Labor’s tendency to govern for section interests.

But this week, it was the Abbott government which turned its back on mainstream opinion to pander to a couple of mouthy conservative commentators wanting to legalise hate speech, a cloister of protected banks wanting to reintroduce skimming, and a tiny cluster of 19th century monarchists.

Little wonder the Prime Minister has been ashen-faced in parliament this week.

547 comments

A succinct summary of the fortnight as it has occurred with the final addition of the motion against Bronwyn Bishop and her record eviction of 98 Opposition members to nil Coalition. She oozes bias

Commenter

Kris

Location

Kanahooka

Date and time

March 27, 2014, 11:41PM

C'mon guys, this bias rhetoric is a bit over the top. What about the newspaper you are reading, " always independent"!!

Commenter

Matt

Date and time

March 28, 2014, 5:42AM

Such a backward government with a 1950's agenda destroy environmental assets such as the Great Barrier Reef introduce the right to be a bigot support the indoctrination of children with religion in schools and allow the likes of Gina rheinhart to rip off precious minerals with minimal tax with no plan to create new job creation scheme all Abbott can come up with is knights and dames what an embarrassment this government is!

Commenter

George

Location

Melbourne

Date and time

March 28, 2014, 5:44AM

Another day and another article from The chief political reporter having a dig at TA and co. Surprisingly enough you seem to constantly ignore just how poor and weak BS has been. Independant always?? Me thinks not.

Commenter

Hodster

Date and time

March 28, 2014, 5:48AM

But Kris, none of this should come as a surprise. We knew what this guy was like, and he was STILL voted in (not that there was much choice when you look at the rabble on the 'other side').

Abbott is starting to make George W Bush look like a mental giant. He is not cut out for office, he is not a statesman; not even close. How he got this far is an indictment of Australian politics and Australians generally..

Commenter

John Anon Citizen

Location

Lane Cove

Date and time

March 28, 2014, 5:49AM

Even though it's depressing to see it play out every day and that it will directly effect Australia's future, this government is a text book case study of a political party elected for no other reason than effective (yet completely dumb) sloganeering and an electorate duped into punishing the opposite team by the invested commercial interests of commercial media... what makes me the proudest is that we have the honour of being one of only a few countries in the history of the world to say we imprison children for so long that they refer to themselves by their NUMBER!!! In 2014! It is a disgrace... have we lost our moral compass?

Commenter

die by the sword

Date and time

March 28, 2014, 5:55AM

I'd still like to hear how those people who have been awarded Order of Australia etc. feel about Prime Minister Joffrey's declaration that by bringing back knights and dames he is giving some 'grace' to our system of recognition. What a graceless group all those above must be!

Commenter

Joe Citizen

Location

Melb

Date and time

March 28, 2014, 5:57AM

Here, here!

Commenter

Quite an Agenda

Date and time

March 28, 2014, 6:14AM

This seems to be a collection of phrases contrived for the purpose of making headline opportunities, rather than measured comment on recent political events. Certainly doesn't measure up to "always independent" - that always sounded too smug to me - this writer makes not reading his items my favoured option!

Commenter

Graham

Date and time

March 28, 2014, 6:16AM

Having Bishop as Speaker is like finding out just before your kid's Saturday morning football game that the other mob's star player's mother is the referee. The woman either doesn't understand that, even allowing for a reasonable amount of bias towards her former political colleagues, she has to be even handed at least some of the time or at least give the appearance of being so. Most hopelessly inept occupier of the Speaker's chair for the past 50 years at least!